33.8 America: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 11/31)

We have very briefly covered the political and governmental situation up to the time approaching the Civil War, but we need to find out more about how people lived in that time. Cholera ravaged the entire country three times in this century and yellow fever hit the northeast early and then the southern and Gulf of Mexico ports, with a peak in 1860. (Ref. 125 ) Northern U.S. society experienced the industrial revolution, cheap transportation, educational and migratory movements and those things influenced the border states somewhat, but the lower south was entirely apart, as was the far west and the southwest. Thus we shall now discuss the various parts of the country separately.

First the north. This was a busy age, with every northern community a human ant-hill of activity. Most white workers still worked 63 hours a week and 18% of all children were still employed. Everything was business, there were no public parks or pleasure resorts, few games or sports. Sculling in the eastern harbors was the only competitive sport, trotting horse races about the only entertainment. As early as 1856 there were 38 trotting courses of national repute in the northern area. Medicine was bad and anyone wanting a good medical education had to go to Austria or France. Tuberculosis, cholera, typhus and yellow fever killed thousands. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes did write on puerperal fever in 1842, antedating Semmelweis by 4 years, but few believed him. Dr. William W. Gerhard of Philadelphia did a fine study of cerebral meningitis in 1834 and later distinguished typhus and typhoid fevers. Dr. Crawford W. Long of Georgia, in 1842 and Dr. W.T.C. Morton of Massachusetts, in 1846 successfully used ether for anesthesia. Dr. Philip Physick of Philadelphia established surgery as a specialty and the American Medical Association was founded in 1847.

City water systems and sanitation were crude or absent. Philadelphia pioneered with pumping water from the Schuylkill River and by 1830 could deliver 6,000,000 gallons of water daily. But Chicago, owing to difficulty of drainage, had practically no plumbing until 1861. Boston, with a population of 165,000 in 1857 had only 6,500 toilets, of which 8, in the basement of the Tremont House, served 200 to 300 guests. Illuminating gas was fairly common by 1860 and 337 cities had it piped in from central plants using coal. Although the district of Michigan only had 31639 people in 1832, there were 940 miles of post roads. (Ref. 151 , 217 )

Immigr2tion from Europe accelerated. In the 1830s there were 540,000 newcomers with 44% Irish, 30% German and 15% English, but by 1840 the number rose to 2,814,554 in the following decade. Almost all arrived and stayed in the north and almost all became Jackson Democrats through the planned manipulations of the party hacks. Irish immigrants comprised 34% of all voters in New York City in 1855, but they contributed little to American economic or intellectual life. Ugly racial and religious riots arose in the eastern cities at least once every decade.